


Spark

by beetle



Series: Under Moonlight, Well-Met: A Dragon Age Origins Series [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Canon Compliant, Idiots in Love, M/M, Magic, Makeup, The Joining, argument, fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 05:20:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10326449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: Daelyn confronts Alistair in the wake of the Joining.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stitchcasual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchcasual/gifts).



> Notes/Warnings: Mentions of minor character death.

Still in a state of shock, Daelyn Surana watched his fellow Wardens stride off: Duncan in one direction and Alistair in another.

 

After a moment of hesitation, he put his newly-acquired darkspawn staff in the holder on his back and hurried after Alistair as fast as his recently healed ankle would allow.

 

“Wait!” he called after the Warden, whose stride, though relaxed, was long. Longer than Daelyn’s was, at the moment. Alistair slowed reluctantly, but kept moving. He didn’t glance back at the half-hobbling mage. “Alis—Warden Alistair,  _please_!” Daelyn called stiffly, suddenly aware of the camp around them and the eyes that might be watching them. Indeed, several knights around a fire were watching the two Wardens with some interest. “Wait!”

 

Alistair finally stopped under a tall pine tree, crossing his arms as he turned to face Daelyn. Like Daelyn’s, his handsome face was bloody and scraped from their expedition into the Wilds: grim, but otherwise unreadable. When Daelyn stopped, slightly out of breath and looked up into Alistair’s silver eyes, his mouth ran dry of moisture and words, but still tasted of dead blood and foul magics.

 

He glanced back at the nearest fire-pit and the now laughing and conversing knights surrounding it. The same held true of the other campfires and groups of people and hounds. Their attention no longer seemed to be aimed at the Wardens in their midst.

 

So, Daelyn looked back to Alistair and took a breath, curious, himself, as to what, if anything, he would say, after. For his part, Alistair’s grim unreadability was leavened by a pointed sort of weary patience. Daelyn flushed, feeling suddenly very young and untried, but drew his dignity up around him like a cloak.

 

 _I’ve earned my robes_ and _my place among the Wardens,_  he reminded himself with a marked measure of uncertainty, nonetheless. He was still shaken to his core by the things he’d seen over the past twelve hours.  _I don’t have to defer to anyone but Duncan_.

 

“What happened back there . . . the Joining,” Daelyn began slowly, shuddering and briefly recalling the blood-and-dragon-drenched nightmares—or  _visions_ —he’d experienced when he’d fainted during the Joining . . . then woken up in Alistair’s strong, protective arms. The visions of black and crimson (so . . . much . . .  _crimson_ ) had been slowly displaced by the silvery-grey of Alistair’s solemn, worried eyes; the color was reminiscent of nothing so much as bright moonlight.

 

Now, those eyes seemed amused and impersonal as they surveyed Daelyn coolly. “Yes? What about it?”

 

Daelyn’s brow furrowed. “Daveth . . . and Ser Jory . . . they are  _dead_.”

 

Alistair nodded once, his mobile mouth tightening and a muscle near his right eye ticking once, almost too quick to notice. “Yes, they are. I was there, too, if you’ll recall.”

 

“I recall . . . all too well,” Daelyn said lowly, shaking his head as he waited for some sign or cue from Alistair as to what to say next. But the words he needed came from within, surprisingly, in a rush that was as angry as it was horrified. “You  _knew_  that this would happen, then.”

 

Now, at last, Alistair frowned. “I knew it  _could_   _have_  happened, yes. I knew that one or two or all of you could die, this evening.”

 

“Knew, and did  _nothing_!  _Said_  nothing!” Daelyn accused, and that muscle ticked again, a there-and-gone, tiny twitch that perhaps even Alistair did not note.

 

“What are you implying, Mage Surana?” he asked quietly, coldly, his gaze as heavy and icy as a snow-covered boulder. Daelyn’s own rage—sudden and burning—felt both fiery and liquid:  _molten_.

 

“I’m not  _implying_  anything,” he hissed angrily. “I’m stating a  _fact_ : You  _knew. Duncan_  knew. Knew that there was a very good chance  _none_  of us would walk away from your precious Joining. That this taint I feel flowing through me,  _even now_ , was the best of all possible outcomes. And you let us—no,  _bade_  us drink that vile blood!”

 

Alistair sneered. “I’ll not speak for Duncan, as he can defend himself or not, as he chooses, should you take your baseless accusations and ignorant, naïve assumptions to him—though I’ll advise you not to. But for my part, I  _bade_   _nothing_. Daveth, as you’ll recall, was champing at the bit to Join the Wardens!”

 

“Daveth was a  _fool_!” Daelyn exclaimed, somewhat louder than he meant to, and they both glanced around to see that they were still seemingly unheeded by the rest of the encampment. “He  _ran_   _headlong_  into this because  _Duncan_  snatched him from the jaws of certain  _death_ —what better way to earn someone’s unswerving trust and loyalty, eh?—only to toss him to the maw of an  _uncertain_  one!”

 

Alistair’s eyes narrowed. “You know not of what you speak, little Mage.”

 

“I know that he saved  _you_  from a life in the Templars—a fate some might say was  _worse_  than death—and because of that, you’d throw your lot in with the man without question, even if he marched us all into Hell!” Daelyn snapped and before even  _his_  tired eyes could pick up on the motion, Alistair had grabbed his arm, just below the shoulder, and was squeezing hard enough that Daelyn knew there’d be finger-shaped bruises on his pale skin for the next week. He yanked on his arm, in an attempt to free it from Alistair’s iron grasp. “Let  _go_  of me!”

 

“I’ll not stand by and let you impugn Duncan’s honor! Or my own,  _Warden Surana!_ ” Alistair spat, hauling Daelyn closer to glare down into his face. In that moment, he was every bit as fearsome a Warden as he’d proved himself in the Korcari Wilds earlier. “Like the rest of us, Duncan does whatever he can and whatever he  _must_  to protect this world from the dark forces that would subvert it. That’s something you  _don’t_  yet understand, and should not speak on so cavalierly.”

 

Still yanking on his aching arm—it even drowned out the lingering pain of his formerly sprained ankle—Daelyn glared right back at Alistair. “I  _never_  speak cavalierly of life and death,  _Warden Alistair_. I did not walk through the Fade—battle demons and spirits—and win my way free again without becoming an Abomination, to die only because I got infected with the same blood that nearly killed a bloody  _hound!_ A hound which, at least, knew what it was getting itself into, going into battle. I? Daveth and Ser Jory? We were among mentors and  _comrades_ , if not friends. And you lead us like lambs to the bloody slaughter!”

 

Alistair’s shoulders stiffened and squared defensively. “Neither Duncan nor I forced you to drink,” he gritted out and Daelyn chuffed a hoarse, rueful laugh, unaware tears were rolling down his face. (Though he absently wondered at the queer trebling of his vision, he merely blinked it away. And again, and again, as it reoccurred.)

 

“Oh, yes. You gave us a  _choice_ , did you not? Between the blood and the sword? A choice that led to Daveth’s  _agonizing death_  and Ser Jory being run-through by the very man who took him from his wife and child!”

 

“Ser Jory knew what it might come to,” Alistair insisted, his clamped-down grip on Daelyn’s arm tightening even more even as he screwed his eyes shut. A vein at his temple was throbbing and Daelyn wondered whom the Warden was trying harder to convince. “He knew he might die either as a Warden or on the road to becoming one.”

 

“Not like  _that_! Not at the hands of his own!” Daelyn hissed once more. “Daveth drank and died. Ser Jory let the mission slip and died. And I. . . .”

 

Alistair opened his eyes and smiled, bitter and mocking. “And  _you_ , Warden Surana. What of  _you_ , then?” One wheaten brow quirked sardonically. “Isn’t that what this—what  _everything_ —is really about?  _You_? That  _your_  precious life could’ve been lost to you and you’re angry that you weren’t told of the risk while you could still back-out without consequence? Like a coward?”

 

Daelyn’s rage cooled. Dropped to an icy chill he’d never, before, felt. “I’m no coward.”

 

“Then what are you,  _elf_? What are you that makes  _you_  so special that the rules which have applied to countless Warden-initiates for countless generations, don’t apply to you, hmm?” Alistair hauled Daelyn so close, the mage could smell the other’s sweat, and the blood he was covered in: all salt and musk, carrion and copper, and the spicy-green scent of the Wilds. His eyes were a buzzing, burning grey in which there was more maelstrom than moonlight. “Who are  _you_  that you deserve to know more going in than every other initiate?  _Who in Thedas_   _are you_ , little Mage, that you think Duncan or I should’ve flouted tradition to forewarn you, and only you?”

 

Daelyn gave up trying to free his arm and tilted his chin up defensively, matching Alistair stony gaze for stony gaze . . . at least for a few moments before his own gaze softened and dropped, blurring and trebling worse than ever. “I’m  _no one_ , Alistair. No less—and no  _more_ —a person than Daveth or Ser Jory. I’m neither smarter nor braver nor  _better_. I survived merely through an accident of blood or birth, or through the whim of Fate. I deserve life nor death no more than they did. Yet, here I am. Still here standing, for reasons I know not.” Blinking away tears that left clean tracks on his dirty, bloody cheeks, Daelyn looked up at Alistair, catching a pained and guilty look on the other’s face before the expression closed off into its previous unreadable mask. “But I had thought . . . after this morning . . . in the moonlight—”

 

Alistair flushed, his face undergoing several more expressions too fleeting for Daelyn to catalog before settling into another harsh, angry smile.

 

“And you think just because I  _kissed you_ —because I  _fancy_  your pretty little self like some moon-addled boy, barely able to grow a beard, that means you deserve special treatment?”

 

Blushing once more, Daelyn looked down again, taking a moment to search himself for an honest answer to Alistair’s question. “No, I—” he finally said, his voice gone small and sad, as it had before. “Not  _special_  treatment. I had just assumed—well,  _hoped_ —that perhaps I . . .  _mattered_  to someone, at last. Mattered to  _you_.” Risking a glance up at Alistair’s face, Daelyn caught another expression of startled guilt on the Warden’s handsome features. “That someone cared whether I—not Mage Surana, but  _Daelyn_ —lived or died. That if that choice came to  _you_ , you might . . . think me  _worth_   _saving_. Or  _attempting_  to save.” Shaking his head at his own foolishness Daelyn blinked away fresh tears. “It was beyond silly of me to think that. In this awful time and this awful place. Me being who and what I am. . . .”

 

With a final, half-hearted tug on his arm, Daelyn was able to free himself from Alistair’s slackened grip. “Good evening, Warden Alistair.”

 

Turning to walk away, Daelyn did not expect Alistair to call after him. But the Warden did, his voice sounding gruff and strange. But Daelyn ignored it. As far as he knew, Alistair might have seniority, but Daelyn didn’t have to take orders from him. So, he kept walking, meaning to go to Duncan’s meeting with the king and get that over with, then perhaps find someplace to wash his hands and face, and steal a few minutes of rest before the battle.

 

The battle. . . .

 

There’d be no moonlight and no kisses for Warden Daelyn Surana, after the day  _he’d_  had, no, but certainly not after the fight ahead. Even assuming he survived it, which was rather a lot to assume. . . .

 

“Daelyn—I said  _wait_!” Alistair’s voice sounded from a few feet behind Daelyn, and before he could resolve to continue ignoring it, his arm was grabbed again, hard and in roughly the same place as before. He was dragged around to face Alistair, who was wild-eyed and flushed about the face as if he’d been drinking. “Listen to me—”

 

“I already have, Warden Alistair.” Daelyn sniffed the way Senior Enchanter Leora might have. “I think I’ve heard everything from you that I need to hear.”

 

“Damnit, Daelyn—” another glance around by them both showed they were the center of attention for several dozen yards around. Both men flushed and Alistair’s grip on Daelyn’s arm loosened. “Stop  _fighting_  me and just  _listen_ , for a moment, will you?”

 

“I don’t have to do a bloody thing you say, Warden Alistair! Now cease manhandling me!” Daelyn huffed, not even deigning to yank on his arm. But he glared at Alistair in a way that might’ve set the other man aflame, had Daelyn been a more practiced Mage. “ _Let go of me!_ ”

 

Alistair glanced around them again, frowning, then looked back at Daelyn. “Look, we need to—to talk about what happened between us this morning—”

 

“Apparently,  _nothing_  happened between us, and I was wrong to think otherwise!”

 

“Daelyn—” Alistair sighed heavily, his eyes meeting Daelyn’s, equally torn between frustration and pleading. “Can we  _please_  go talk about this somewhere a little less public.”

 

“There’s nothing to talk  _about_ , Warden Alistair. I’ll see you when next I see you.” Daelyn ripped his arm free again and started stalking back toward the King Cailan’s tent. But Alistair caught up to him easily and grabbed his arm again, and began dragging him off, away from the king’s tent, toward a small, dim copse of trees and a tall, but narrow grey tent that, once Alistair dragged him inside, proved to be untenanted. There were two pallets, separated by two neat piles of gear—one of which looked like Daelyn’s—and two unlit lamps.

 

“Welcome to your palatial new quarters. Or should I say  _our_   _quarters_?” Alistair shoved Daelyn at the pallet on the left and the flustered mage, because of his barely healed, still-weak ankle, stumbled and pinwheeled his arms . . . only to go sprawling, nonetheless, managing to twist about so he landed on his backside, rather than his stomach or face.

 

He unbuckled, then struggled off the holder with his staff and tossed both at his pile of gear. Then he glared up at Alistair, who was watching him intently, his eyes as dark as malachite in the dim light shining in from outside.

 

“So. Where’s Duncan sleep, then?” Daelyn asked, crossing his arms as casually as he could manage. Which wasn’t very, if the knowing look on Alistair’s face was anything to go by.

 

“He  _doesn’t_. Now,” Alistair said firmly, stepping closer even as Daelyn drew away. “You  _will_  listen, Daelyn Surana.”

 

The elven mage snorted and sneered up at the Warden, bracing his restless hands to either side of him, on the pallet. “Careful, Warden Alistair . . . your Templar is showing.”

 

Alistair winced and glowered, then hunkered down in front of the nearest lamp. In less than a minute, he had it lit and was replacing the glass. A cheery, yellow glow lit the confines of the grey tent, making it less blandly alien, and almost . . . welcoming.

 

Then, Alistair turned on his knees to face Daelyn, simultaneously reaching behind himself to sweep the flap of the tent shut.

 

Nervous, now—who knew what the angry Warden intended to do here, away from the eyes of the camp? Daelyn had never been in a physical fight and dared not use his magic against a Grey Warden . . . even though, now, he  _was one_ —Daelyn shifted and scooted back a bit from Alistair, not that there was far to go. After few seconds, he hit tent-wall and stopped, his eyes wide on Alistair’s strangely intense face.

 

“I . . . I  _don’t_  want to fight you, Alistair,” Daelyn began, eyes growing ever wider as Alistair moved closer.

 

“And I don’t want to fight  _you_ , Daelyn,” Alistair replied quietly, his brows furrowing deeply. “That’s the last thing I want.”

 

And with that, he stopped just before Daelyn, who’d drawn his legs up so that his knees were tucked practically under his chin. One of his earliest memories of life before the Tower was of being curled into this same position and jammed into one of his best hiding spots—dark, well-hidden, and small, even for a child so small as  _Daelyn_  had been—as a Templar’s gauntleted hand had reached out to him.

 

 _For_  him.

 

And to this day, many were the times Daelyn wished he’d never reached back. . . .

 

Shaking off the unwanted memory, he eyed Alistair warily. The former Templar was sitting on his heels, both hands held out in a gesture of supplication. Suddenly, Daelyn felt very  _young_ ,  _very_  confused, and  _very tired_.

 

“Then, what  _do_  you want, Warden Alistair?” he asked wearily, and Alistair’s expression softened into his customary amused and friendly one. “What do you want of me?”

 

“ _There’s_  a loaded question, if ever I’ve heard one. Let’s start with  _everything_  and work our way from there?” he replied almost playfully. Daelyn frowned and shook his head.

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

Alistair sighed again, then reached out slowly, placing his hands, finally, on Daelyn’s slim shoulders, leaning in and smiling the way he had in the moonlight not a day ago.

 

“I had to fight every instinct in me, Daelyn. They bloody  _screamed_  for me to lunge at you and knock that blasted cup out of your hand, earlier,” he whispered in a shaking rush, the amusement leaving his expression, to be replaced by relief and guilt. “I didn’t even allow myself to  _think_  of what the ritual entailed, beforehand. Couldn’t afford to think of what happened if you tried to back out or if the blood . . . if it  _killed_  you. Not after this morning . . . and the moonlight. And when the moment was upon us. . . .” Alistair sighed again, hanging his head, even as his hands tightened around Daelyn’s shoulders as if searching for a way to steady himself. “When the moment was upon us, Daveth’s body cooling and Ser Jory’s still twitching out the last of its life, I froze as Duncan offered you the cup. But as you took it, my vitality returned to me and I would’ve leapt to spare you the horror of drinking . . . but the knowledge of what would come next froze me again. For if I saved you from the cup,  _nothing_  would save us both from Duncan’s sword.”

 

Daelyn could only gape while Alistair fell silent and struggled to compose himself. Finally, the Warden looked up, his eyes reddened and wet, his face ashen under dirt and blood—but for clean tracks running down his cheeks.

 

“I knew that the only thing for it was to let you drink. So, I did. And I prayed to Andraste and the Maker that you would be strong enough to survive—I never prayed so hard!—and you  _did!_ ” Alistair laughed, short and sharp and almost hysterical. “I held you when you swooned. You were clearly in distress, but  _not_  dying or dead. Far from it. The Maker has other plans for you. I daresay you’ll outlast us all—even Duncan!”

 

“Don’t say that!” Daelyn whispered, sketching a rune of protection in the air between them. “There’s no curse greater than outliving all that one knows and loves. I would not wish that on  _anyone_. Even on Duncan. Even after  _tonight_. And I . . . I certainly don’t wish it on you.”

 

Alistair’s eyes, shining bronze in the firelight, widened and he smiled a little. “That’s . . . more than I’d expected or hoped for, after . . . after all that’s happened. That’s why I was so . . . harsh and cruel, just now. I knew that you’d be angry with me. Maybe even hurt that I didn’t . . . didn’t find some way to warn you.” He laughed briefly once more, mirthless and tired. “I was certain that you’d despise me forever and honestly couldn’t blame you. You survived the Joining, no thanks to me, Daelyn, but  _had_  you died . . . had you  _died_ , that would’ve been all on me.”

 

Daelyn bit his lip and reached out with his rune-hand to cup Alistair’s cheek. Stubble tickled his palm and he smiled a bit more. “You did what you could. Had you done anything other than what you  _did_  do, Duncan would’ve slain us both. I . . . it is a hard thing to accept. Even now, with my anger having cooled. But in the moment, I was angrier than ever I had been. At him. At you. But mostly at  _myself_ , for . . . for surviving, when two men with more heart and more honor than I have . . .  _died_. Pointlessly.”

 

Alistair leaned into Daelyn’s touch, his eyes fluttering shut, his face a study in relief once more. “You were wrong, before, you know that? You’re  _not no one_ , Daelyn Surana—and you have more heart and honor—are a better man than any I’ve met so far. You are skilled and brave and, even with the taint of the darkspawn all Wardens must carry, still as pure and perfect as a moonlit sky.”

 

Daelyn flushed and, when Alistair’s eyes opened again, met them shyly.

 

“You take my breath away, little Mage. And I’m not just glad that I’m not responsible for your death, but I’m glad you’re  _alive_. That you’re  _here_  with me, even in  _this_  awful place, in this awful  _time_ ,” Alistair murmured, covering Daelyn’s hand with his own. “I’m  _glad_  that Duncan chose you. I’m glad that I  _met_  you, glad you survived the  _Joining_ , and glad that I kissed you under the moonlight, because I fancy your pretty little self like some moon-addled boy, barely able to grow a beard.”

 

Daelyn smiled hopefully as the last of his anger and disappointment, and the last of his grief—not for Daveth and Ser Jory; for  _that_  grief would be a lifetime in going, he suspected—at having lost the fragile spark that’d sprung up between himself and Alistair, faded away.

 

For though it was still small and fitful, vulnerable and besieged, that spark was definitely  _there_. Still. As powerful and fragile and defiant in the face of darkness as the cheery lamp to their right.

 

“Well,” Daelyn said, his smile widening as he gazed into Alistair’s flickering eyes. “ _I_  kissed  _you first_. But I’m very glad I did. And that I let you kiss me back.”

 

Chuckling, Alistair bit his bottom lip and leaned a bit closer. Daelyn could smell him again, all musk and copper and  _Wilds_. “If I’m not assuming too much or overstepping . . . I should very much like it if you kissed me first, again.”

 

Blushing, Daelyn’s smile was now more of a repressed grin. “Hmm. Are you certain  _you_  don’t wish to kiss  _me_? There  _is_  a difference, or so I’m told.”

 

“Have it on good authority, do you?” Alistair’s right eyebrow crooked again, then he laughed. “Well, be that as it may, I think I like it best when you show initiative.”

 

“Is that so, Warden Alistair?” Daelyn asked, doing some leaning in of his own. Alistair nodded.

 

“That’s  _very much_  so, Warden Daelyn.” Alistair’s eyes were warm . . . no,  _smoldering_. Daelyn shivered.

 

“Far be it from me to disappoint my brother-in-arms, then,” he whispered on Alistair’s lips as, despite their banter, they met each other exactly halfway.

 

And it wasn’t until twilight had settled its purple-blue bulk on the encampment, that the two Wardens exited the tent, flushed and smiling. Thence, they made their way—shoulders bumping, hands brushing, fingers flirting—to King Cailan’s tent, wherein awaited their next orders.

 

END

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come hang with me on [The Tumbles](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)!


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